Just curious...
Let's say you knew a guy, a really bad man, who beat his kids, very likely even killed one, who you were told on very good authority was going to cause you and your neighbors great harm. While he'd been restricted to house arrest, had been forced to wear one of those ankle tracker things, he'd also been researching ways to unlock it, and looking into ways to get some new guns.
The police don't listen to you - they figure the guy isn't going anywhere, he's under too close a watch - but you have to protect your family, so you go and kill the guy.
However, you then learn that while maybe he'd hoped someday to hurt you, that the people who told you he was going to kill you were all wrong, they'd misheard things.
So... what does this make you? A bad man, probably better off dead, but does this justify your actions?
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Friday, January 14, 2005
A living legend.
I've had a record number of hits to my site in the last 24 hours.
The cause? Search engine results from people looking up Charlie Womack, who was killed in the La Conchita mudslide. The man must have been loved by many, many, many people.
I'm pretty sure I met him once or twice, but it seems like the other people I know, from the flower shop as well as Rodleen, didn't merely know the guy, but held him in very high esteem.
What struck me most about reading the details of his life was that he was sleeping in a teepee he'd built when he was effectively swallowed by the mountain. I don't want to disrespect the man or his memory, but I think thats pretty bad ass. People are killed in car accidents, building fires... but while in a homemade teepee? As far as ways to die go, how fitting for such a living legend?
The cause? Search engine results from people looking up Charlie Womack, who was killed in the La Conchita mudslide. The man must have been loved by many, many, many people.
I'm pretty sure I met him once or twice, but it seems like the other people I know, from the flower shop as well as Rodleen, didn't merely know the guy, but held him in very high esteem.
What struck me most about reading the details of his life was that he was sleeping in a teepee he'd built when he was effectively swallowed by the mountain. I don't want to disrespect the man or his memory, but I think thats pretty bad ass. People are killed in car accidents, building fires... but while in a homemade teepee? As far as ways to die go, how fitting for such a living legend?
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Tragic week...
I don't write much about it, as I should, but the side job I've had ever since I moved to L.A. has been at a florist in Westwood. I grew up in the flower business, as my mom was an awesome designer, working at a number of shops, and out of our home, before opening her own shop in Old Lyme when I was in highschool. When I hit L.A., I went into the first flower shop I saw and applied... and they took me in. They're great people - turnover in the past ten years has been light. Even people who quit years ago will return to help out for a few hours or a few days around Valentines and Mothers Day, just because the shop vibe is so good. As cliched as the term gets, the place and the staff are tight, and very much my L.A. family.
Zameer, who I wrote about below, is another employee, who delivered flowers before his semester in India. Sadly, a few days after we were relieved to hear he was alive, on one of the safe coastal towns, we learned that another employee's father died of a heart attack while en route to Thailand. He was going on a missionary trip, planned before the tsunami, made all the more urgent after.
Then earlier today I learned that a man who'd helped to occasional construction work in the shop, Charlie Womack, was killed in the La Conchita landslide, in a house that he'd purchased from the flower shop's owners only a few years ago.
Earlier today I received an email from Rodleen, the girl who worked with me on the X Games. She wrote that a couple dear friends of hers were killed in the same landslide - and one of them, indeed, was Charlie Womack.
As agnostic as I am, the combination of tragedy and coincidence gives me the feeling that these disasters are somehow intended, and these events not as tragic, or coincidental, as they seem to be...
From the L.A. Times...
Charlie Womack
Living in Charlie Womack's house on the back side of La Conchita was like living in the '60s.
"It was a modern commune. It was the closest thing I'd ever seen to the ideal in movies like 'Easy Rider.' But it was real, it worked, it was natural," longtime friend Steve Samojeden said.
Womack's home was always open to his extended network of friends, who dubbed themselves "The La Conchita Llamas." He welcomed those in need, even turning over the house's master bedroom to friend Jimmie Wallet and his wife and three young children when they were in financial difficulty and needed a place to stay.
Wallet survived the mudslide, but his wife, Michelle, 36, and daughters Hanna, 10, Raven, 6, and Paloma, 2, were among the missing.
Womack was staying in a 40-foot tepee that he had erected in front of his Santa Barbara Street home when the cliff above the street gave way. Friends said he had been hiking earlier in the day and was probably sleeping when debris engulfed him.
Charles Womack, 51, was identified by the Ventura County coroner's office Tuesday. Authorities said he died of blunt-force chest and neck injuries.
A construction worker, Womack was well aware of La Conchita's landslide danger, friends said.
One set of houseguests were two women who had been displaced by the neighborhood's 1995 landslide. They repaid his kindness by making large, family-style meals for those staying at Womack's house.
Others there were members of Womack's contracting crew and those playing in his band, "7th Day."
He enjoyed setting up large Gidget-style beach parties that featured a stage, deejays and bonfires, friends said.
Womack grew up surfing in Oxnard and was determined to raise his four children near the beach. The three youngest, 15-year-old Tessa and sons Isiah and Orion, both in their 20s, lived with him. They were unharmed. An adult daughter, Cory, lives in Ventura.
"Within his lifestyle and means, La Conchita was what he could do," Samojeden said. "He definitely was someone who lived every day like he could die tomorrow."
Zameer, who I wrote about below, is another employee, who delivered flowers before his semester in India. Sadly, a few days after we were relieved to hear he was alive, on one of the safe coastal towns, we learned that another employee's father died of a heart attack while en route to Thailand. He was going on a missionary trip, planned before the tsunami, made all the more urgent after.
Then earlier today I learned that a man who'd helped to occasional construction work in the shop, Charlie Womack, was killed in the La Conchita landslide, in a house that he'd purchased from the flower shop's owners only a few years ago.
Earlier today I received an email from Rodleen, the girl who worked with me on the X Games. She wrote that a couple dear friends of hers were killed in the same landslide - and one of them, indeed, was Charlie Womack.
As agnostic as I am, the combination of tragedy and coincidence gives me the feeling that these disasters are somehow intended, and these events not as tragic, or coincidental, as they seem to be...
From the L.A. Times...
Charlie WomackLiving in Charlie Womack's house on the back side of La Conchita was like living in the '60s.
"It was a modern commune. It was the closest thing I'd ever seen to the ideal in movies like 'Easy Rider.' But it was real, it worked, it was natural," longtime friend Steve Samojeden said.
Womack's home was always open to his extended network of friends, who dubbed themselves "The La Conchita Llamas." He welcomed those in need, even turning over the house's master bedroom to friend Jimmie Wallet and his wife and three young children when they were in financial difficulty and needed a place to stay.
Wallet survived the mudslide, but his wife, Michelle, 36, and daughters Hanna, 10, Raven, 6, and Paloma, 2, were among the missing.
Womack was staying in a 40-foot tepee that he had erected in front of his Santa Barbara Street home when the cliff above the street gave way. Friends said he had been hiking earlier in the day and was probably sleeping when debris engulfed him.
Charles Womack, 51, was identified by the Ventura County coroner's office Tuesday. Authorities said he died of blunt-force chest and neck injuries.
A construction worker, Womack was well aware of La Conchita's landslide danger, friends said.
One set of houseguests were two women who had been displaced by the neighborhood's 1995 landslide. They repaid his kindness by making large, family-style meals for those staying at Womack's house.
Others there were members of Womack's contracting crew and those playing in his band, "7th Day."
He enjoyed setting up large Gidget-style beach parties that featured a stage, deejays and bonfires, friends said.
Womack grew up surfing in Oxnard and was determined to raise his four children near the beach. The three youngest, 15-year-old Tessa and sons Isiah and Orion, both in their 20s, lived with him. They were unharmed. An adult daughter, Cory, lives in Ventura.
"Within his lifestyle and means, La Conchita was what he could do," Samojeden said. "He definitely was someone who lived every day like he could die tomorrow."
David Charles Markland heading into space.
Because I'm a geek, I signed up last year to have my name put on a space probe that will crash into a comet.Set for collision on July 4th, the rocket carrying my name and the craft its piggybacking on launced earlier today.
NASA Launches Spacecraft On Comet-Smashing Mission
Mola Ram has died
Amrish Puri, the actor best known to western audiences as Indiana Jones's nemesis in Temple of Doom, died today at a Mumbai (formerly Bombay) hospital after a long illness. He was 72.Puri acted in more than 200 films and was one of the best loved baddies in Hindi cinema, frequently playing crime bosses or inflexible fathers preventing the heroine from marrying her true love.
Born in 1932, his career took off when he was in his late thirties with Reshma aur Shera (Reshma and Shera), a love story set in the Rajasthan desert. He was most famous for playing gang leader Mogambo in the 1989 movie Mr India.
Puri also featured in Hollywood films: he was in Gandhi but is probably best remembered as Mola Ram, the shaven-headed murderous cult leader in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. He kept the minimalist hairstyle thereafter...
source: Guardian Unlimited
Monday, January 10, 2005
Love from the Blogosphere
Wow. Comments from Shabooty, Anti, Kalipornia, Tony, and even my own Dad (pictured) in response to my latest video "test" project.Due largely to being linked on Anti's blog, an rare honor, indeed, I've received a near record number of hits on this site in the last 24 hours. Even Shabooty tipped his hat my way by reposting my "A couple more lists" post from below.
And, best of all, Benzo emailed me with this:
i am coming to l.a. in about two weeks on the 22nd. my friend, dana, is throwing me a kind of "welcome to l.a." shindig, and she wanted me to invite my homies. so i thought to myself, "self, who totally cool enough to come to your party?" and then it hit me. david. mr. unsomnabulist. *he* is cool enough for my party. so, yeah, you and your girlfriend are totally invited if you'd like to come. all of my friends, including previously mentioned dana, are in their mid-late twenties, so it's not like some teenage college kegger thing we're talking about here. although, that does sound kind of fun. mm. beer.
All for now. The new job gives me a new excuse to blog less frequently - then again, working means tasks to procrastinate, which is usually when I blog...
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Another video wrapped...
Call this one another experiment, another chance to try out a new program. This time: Adobe After Effects.In short, I thought it would be relatively easy to replicate the look of that cool HP commercial that uses the Kinks song "Picture Book" (click here to see the original ads).
Alas, while I'm sure with a little more time I could have figured out some advanced tricks to nearly perfect the effect, I still think the end result is still fun to watch, if only in an amateur way.
The only professional thing about the clip is the use of my girlfriend Claire Dunlap, who had the patience to sit through dozens of takes as I tried to coach her on the blocking that I made up as we went, along with specific gestures I needed her to make so I could actually do the effect.
Here it is:
In the meantime, I'm meeting with my actors tomorrow night to have a quick read thru of the shoot rescheduled for next Saturday. Katzinjammer commented that "postponing filming usually means never filming," which I would have to agree with. In this case, in means that I can get some extra help as I'm shooting on a weekend, and my d.p. is also available. This also gives me a little more time to storyboard. Best yet, if my first check for the new job arrives by the end of the week, postponing, in this case, means that I can rent a boom and mic for better audio, and feed my cast and crew something better than El Pollo Loco (like Barney's Beanery).
By the way, while I originally recheduled out of fear of rain, last Thursday was the only day this week Los Angeles didn't get a drop of water. Of course, now we're being pummelled with rain that even Forest Gump would be astonished by - somtimes I think it's raining upside down.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
A couple more lists...
Alas, work has come my way. A crazy month of events I'm production managing for a shoe company. Malls, nightclubs, college campuses. Six weeks of work, to start.
I planned on shooting a short film, but postponed it until a week from Saturday due to the erratic rain in L.A. Which means I have to shoot something else, wing something else, to have to present to the Group 101 folks on Sunday night...
On a more substantial note, I bring you a couple links to distract you from the Tsunami coverage and the endless "best of" lists that rape and pillage the media this time of year...
The Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2004 (found through Alexis, our favorite New York escort). Of course, this only means female nude scenes, bless their souls, and includes screen grabs so you can decide for yourself if its worth putting these movies into your Netflix queue.
The 100 Most Annoying Things of 2004 at Retrocrush is better than an episode of VH-1's "I Love the 00s".
I planned on shooting a short film, but postponed it until a week from Saturday due to the erratic rain in L.A. Which means I have to shoot something else, wing something else, to have to present to the Group 101 folks on Sunday night...
On a more substantial note, I bring you a couple links to distract you from the Tsunami coverage and the endless "best of" lists that rape and pillage the media this time of year...
The Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2004 (found through Alexis, our favorite New York escort). Of course, this only means female nude scenes, bless their souls, and includes screen grabs so you can decide for yourself if its worth putting these movies into your Netflix queue.
The 100 Most Annoying Things of 2004 at Retrocrush is better than an episode of VH-1's "I Love the 00s".
Monday, January 03, 2005
They say there's gonna be a resolution...
Happy New Years and all that crap.
Now that we have that out of the way, I wanted to point out some resolutions I think everyone should make, in general. But since New Years resolutions tend to last little longer than a bad fart, I think penalities are appropriate for people who break them.
This is, by no means, a complete list. But we have to start somewhere...
1. All radio dee jays will be given term limits - like four years. Starting with morning zoo "jocks". (this means you, Kevin & Bean, and Mark & Brian)
2. Any publicly displayed clock, like those on billboards, on banks, on clocktowers, need to be correct more than twice a day. Property owners or leasors will be fined $1 per minute that clocks are wrong or broken, with said funds going to needy retarded crippled homosexual children.
3. Pedestrians who begin crossing once the flashing red hand begins waive all rights to sue vehicles that him them. Likewise, vehicles that pull to a stop over clearly marked crosswalks are fairgame to be kicked and keyed by pedestrians that need to walk around them.
4. If you end up with a shopping cart with a faulty wheel, the grocery store permits you to "accidentally" barrel into one display of any size. Any items that land in your cart you get for free.
5. Groups of people who walk more than two side by side on narrow walk ways, crowds, or sidewalks will be immediately drafted as minesweepers to help with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
6. News channels will immediately reduce the amount of on screen graphics (chyron, bugs, tickers, etc.) by 50% and resize all video footage so none is obstructed by said graphics. Or they can choose to purchase all of their viewers large screen TVs.
and
7. Americans who claim that George W. Bush is not "their" President will be sent to a mandatory, month long, naked "love in" with Americans who claim that Bush never lied. Upon return to society, everyone will be sanitized with a mild disinfectant.
Feel free to join in.
Now that we have that out of the way, I wanted to point out some resolutions I think everyone should make, in general. But since New Years resolutions tend to last little longer than a bad fart, I think penalities are appropriate for people who break them.
This is, by no means, a complete list. But we have to start somewhere...
1. All radio dee jays will be given term limits - like four years. Starting with morning zoo "jocks". (this means you, Kevin & Bean, and Mark & Brian)
2. Any publicly displayed clock, like those on billboards, on banks, on clocktowers, need to be correct more than twice a day. Property owners or leasors will be fined $1 per minute that clocks are wrong or broken, with said funds going to needy retarded crippled homosexual children.
3. Pedestrians who begin crossing once the flashing red hand begins waive all rights to sue vehicles that him them. Likewise, vehicles that pull to a stop over clearly marked crosswalks are fairgame to be kicked and keyed by pedestrians that need to walk around them.
4. If you end up with a shopping cart with a faulty wheel, the grocery store permits you to "accidentally" barrel into one display of any size. Any items that land in your cart you get for free.
5. Groups of people who walk more than two side by side on narrow walk ways, crowds, or sidewalks will be immediately drafted as minesweepers to help with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
6. News channels will immediately reduce the amount of on screen graphics (chyron, bugs, tickers, etc.) by 50% and resize all video footage so none is obstructed by said graphics. Or they can choose to purchase all of their viewers large screen TVs.
and
7. Americans who claim that George W. Bush is not "their" President will be sent to a mandatory, month long, naked "love in" with Americans who claim that Bush never lied. Upon return to society, everyone will be sanitized with a mild disinfectant.
Feel free to join in.
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